“Neat,” I said, stuffing a few pamphlets into my pocket. They were emblazoned with the phrase 615 EASY STEPS TO NOT BEING EVIL on the front.
Librarians fired back and forth, turning the area into a storm of gunfire. One of the rebels had dropped a crate down the hole and it had broken open, spilling teddy bears of various colors. I ran and snatched three, then pulled the pins and threw them in quick succession at approaching enemy troops.
Draulin tossed me another bear and the two of us took shelter beside my grandfather, who crouched next to a wall. “My, my…” Grandpa said, looking around the vast cavern. “This place is exactly as I imagined it. Nobbed Noviks! I’ve dreamed of breaking in here. Yes I have.”
“Why aren’t they fighting back very much?” I asked, pointing at the Librarians. The evil ones didn’t seem to be mounting as strong an offense as I would have assumed. Sure, there was gunfire back toward us, but no explosions.
“They’re probably worried about hurting the things in these archives,” Draulin said.
“That might help Himalaya and her team hold out,” I said.
“Yes, but for how long?” Draulin said. “Lord Smedry, have you given any thought toward how we are going to find one man in all of this?”
I nodded in agreement. This place was big, and my father was in here somewhere. Theoretically. We only had my mother’s word on that fact. I’d used the Truthfinder’s Lens to confirm she wasn’t lying, but what if she was just plain wrong?
“We’ll need to talk to your mother,” Grandpa said, seeming troubled. Perhaps he was thinking along the same lines as I was. “She claimed she could find him.”
“Let’s get into one of these archive rooms,” I said, tossing my bear. “Might be easier to chat without worrying about bullets.” Draulin waved to Dif and to Shasta, who had just landed, and the five of us ducked into one of the hutlike stone archive rooms. Inside, shelves and shelves of recipe books shuddered against one another, responding to the firefight outside. A few robe-wearing cultists cowered in the corner, and I tossed a handful of pamphlets to keep them distracted.
“All right,” Grandpa said to us. “Shasta, what do you suggest?”
“We find Attica,” my mother said. “I’m sure he’s here. This place holds one of the largest archives of Forgotten Language texts in existence. If we find where the Librarians are keeping those, we’ll find him.”
“Surely it’s not that simple,” I said. “I mean, how did he sneak in here? How is he keeping the Librarians from catching him? If he is here, he’ll be hidden. What makes you think we’ll be able to find him, if they can’t?”
Draulin looked at me and blinked, as if stunned.
“What?” I demanded.
“I apologize, Lord Smedry,” she said. “But that was merely a solid, responsible assessment of our situation—filled with insightful realizations and important questions that need to be asked.”
Was that … a compliment?
“Of course,” Draulin added, “a truly responsible person would have asked those things before leading us in a headfirst assault on the most powerful Librarian stronghold in the world. Baby steps, I suppose.”
“Right,” Grandpa said, clapping his hands. “So where are the Forgotten Language texts?”
My mother shrugged. “No idea. I’ve never been in here before, remember?”
An explosion shook the ground. I peeked out the doorway. Unfortunately, it looked like the Librarians had sent several hulking Alivened—made entirely from old romance novels—to attack our position. Thrown teddy bears reduced the first of these to fluttering scraps of paper, but more continued to come, and Alivened are surprisingly hardy.
“Himalaya!” I hissed.
She took a moment to pose dramatically in her cape and leather skirt before joining us. Being around Smedrys has that kind of effect on people.
“You all should go do your thing,” she told us, shouldering her machine gun. “My people will pull into one of these buildings and hold off the Bibliodenites. We can probably hole up for a while. If it goes too long, I’m going to get my people out of here. We have grappling guns; we should be able to extract back out that hole.”
“We need to find the archive of Forgotten Language texts,” I said. “Any ideas?”
“I’ve never visited those,” she said, “but these are Librarians. There’s definitely an index in here somewhere. Find that, and it will lead you to the cavern with the Forgotten Language books.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll just have to … Wait, did you say the cavern with the books? You mean the building inside this cavern, right?”
Himalaya laughed. “You think this is the whole Highbrary? I already told you it’s beneath the entire downtown! This is merely the central hub. There are hundreds upon hundreds of other caverns, though most are small—barely big enough for one subtopic—burrowed along corridors in the rock.”
Great. “Well, Grandpa?”
“We split up, obviously!” Grandpa said. “Two groups; we’ll search twice as quickly.”
Searching infinity twice as fast didn’t seem like it would get us anywhere, but Grandpa was still probably right. “I’ll take Dif and Draulin,” I said, reluctantly considering my options.
“I’m going with you,” my mother said.
“But—”
“I came here at your request, not his,” Shasta said, eyeing Grandpa. “Leavenworth can take the knight; his group will have only two people, so it makes sense for the knight to join him.”
“Fine,” I said.
“Lord Smedry,” Draulin said. “I strongly recommend not separating me from the prisoner.”
“What?” Shasta asked. “Worried you’ll miss out on another chance to sucker punch me?”
The ground shook from another explosion.
“Make your decisions quickly, people,” Himalaya said.
I met my mother’s eyes, then pulled a Lens out of my pocket. I knew that some of the words she had said so far weren’t lies, but there can be a big gap between “factually correct” and “true.”
And so I raised the Shaper’s Lens.
My grandfather drew in his breath sharply. He looked from me to Shasta. She didn’t say a word, and I was confident she knew exactly what this Lens did. She knew a lot of things. Not quite as much as she pretended to know, mind you—but since she pretended to know basically everything, “not quite as much” still covered a lot of ground.
I raised the Lens and gave it a burst of power. As I’d been warned, I started glowing. The city’s dome, which prevented people from using Lenses to disguise themselves and sneak in, made it obvious I was using a Lens—in this case, one that let me see someone’s heart, soul, and deepest desires.
My mother’s soul opened to me.
The air around her warped and seemed to burn away, revealing an image of her standing in the center of a peaceful street. On one side of her, suburban homes ran in a row, each with manicured grass and toys on the front porch.
Opposite them, Free Kingdomer castles rose with shining gates and beautiful brickwork. Everything seemed perfectly at peace, save my mother, who stood before a short stone column. It was about as tall as her waist, and Mother leaned against its top, hands pressed down on a blackness that seemed to be trying to bubble up through the center of the column.
Mother shoved and pushed, keeping the blackness inside. I suddenly heard a small voice crying, and watched my mother turn and look over her shoulder at a boy who stood in the street, arms outstretched. My mother reached toward him, and the blackness started to bubble out around her hand.
She turned her back on the child and continued to work, to toil, to keep that darkness contained. While all the while, the child cried out for his mother …
I found myself trembling, and so I ripped the Lens free of my eye and turned away. Stupid thing wasn’t working. Wasn’t it supposed to show me what my mother wanted most in life? This was obviously how she saw herself: a sole figure trying to keep
the peace, to hold back destruction and darkness, at the cost of all else.
Well, that was merely her opinion. She wasn’t the only one fighting. Far from it. She could have taken a little time for someone else in her life. What good did it do to save the world if the ones who needed you most were left to starve?
Shasta didn’t offer me any comfort. She stood with arms folded, avoiding my eyes, as if uncomfortable.
I shoved the Lens away. Well, Grandpa had said it could be unpredictable. At least I had my answer. The Lens had shown me a world at peace, with the Hushlands and the Free Kingdoms existing side by side. That was what my mother wanted: a world where everyone could just live their lives. It was still terrible, as in her vision, the Librarians maintained their rule over half the world.
But at least I knew where her heart was.
Grandpa walked up to me and put his arm around my shoulders. I was taller than he was. It hadn’t always been that way, had it?
“Strength, lad,” he said softly.
The building rocked again. Right. Middle of a battle. Sneaking into the Highbrary. I composed myself and nodded to my grandfather, then back to the others. “I’ll go with Mother and Cousin Dif,” I said. “Grandpa Smedry will go with Draulin.”
“Off we go, then!” Grandpa exclaimed. “To victory! Lad, you still have that phone Kaz gave you?”
I dug in my pocket, pulling it out. It was broken from one of my several falls.
“Drat,” Grandpa said, then handed me his.
“But you—”
“We can communicate with Courier’s Lenses,” Grandpa said. “This is if you need to call Kaz or the rebel force here.” He took another phone, Draulin’s, and tossed it to Himalaya.
“And if you need to talk to them?” I demanded.
“I’ll call you,” Grandpa said lightly.
“Give me a report when you know how things are going,” Himalaya said, pocketing the phone. “And I’ll give you warning if my people have to retreat.” She strode out to continue leading her force.
“Off with us, then!” Grandpa said.
“You go right, I’ll go left?” I said to him.
“Sure,” he said, then took me by the forearm and met my eyes, nodding once. “Good luck, lad.”
I talk a lot about my grandpa in these volumes. I explain how impulsive, even reckless, he was. I discuss his force of personality and his sometimes bizarre actions.
But do not mistake my grandfather for a fool. His wisdom may not have been apparent, but I’ve never known a man as great as he was. As he bade me good luck, and as I looked into his eyes, I realized something.
“You’re scared,” I said to him.
“Terrified,” he said. “The Librarians won’t let the defeat at Mokia stand; the warmongers among them will push harder for a full-scale invasion of the Free Kingdoms, and your announcement will give them the fuel they need.”
“So we screwed up?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Grandpa said. “We fought, we struggled, and we did what we had to. But, well…”
“What?”
“Let’s just say that there’s a reason I was so keen to go along with an all-or-nothing infiltration of the Highbrary. We’re in dangerous waters, lad. Dangerous waters indeed. And no Talents to keep us alive.” He took a deep breath. “But keep your head up. We can get out of this yet. You find your father and stop him.”
I frowned. “That makes it sound like you’re not going to search for him.”
“Oh, I’ll keep my eyes open,” Grandpa said. “But my path might lead another direction. We’re in the Highbrary! Bleating Bears! I’ll never have a better chance to sabotage the Librarian infrastructure. I’m going to destroy this place, if I can. So let’s go give ’em hell!”
“Grandpa! This is a family story.”
“Well, when you write this part down, simply tell everyone I said ‘give them’ with proper grammar.” Eyes twinkling, he squeezed my arm.
With that, we parted.
Chapter
Melissa
Well, that last chapter was kind of self-important, wasn’t it? I blame the relative lack of footnotes.* As a reward for being a good girl/boy/robot and reading all of that gobbledygook, I’m going to explain the chapter names to you. Never say I don’t give you anything.*
You see, the chapters in this book are identified like they are to call attention to a growing problem in fiction, that of disrespect for chapters and their own individual desires. How would you like it if you didn’t get to have a name, but were instead assigned a number based on your order of creation? Instead of Samantha, Didgeridoo, or whatever silly name Hushlanders are using nowadays, what if you’d been named “Human Spawn Number One Hundred Eight Billion, Fourteen Million, Four Hundred Eighty Thousand and Two”?
I suspect you wouldn’t like that. Well, chapters don’t like it either. They never get to be themselves, you know? It’s always “Chapter One” or “Chapter Twenty-Seven” or “Oh, When Is This Stupid Book Going to End?”
To bring attention to this, I’ve allowed the chapters to name themselves whatever they want. (All except Chapter Four; I put my foot down when he insisted he be allowed to have an extra o in the middle of his name.)
I dashed out into the firefight, Dif and Shasta right behind me. The good Librarian force had pulled back almost to the building we’d used for our impromptu conference. They’d taken casualties; this fight was real. I won’t go into the gory details, but it wasn’t pretty.
Angry, I pulled out the Shamefiller’s Lens and pointed it at a group of oncoming Alivened monsters. I started glowing, and the Lens spurted out a ray of power.
My aim was off, and my beam hit the stone ground of the cavern.
“Oh, blast! I’m the worst section of floor ever! That person just stubbed his toe on a bit of my uneven rock. And I wasn’t washed properly! Their feet are going to totally get dirty walking upon me and—”
BOOOM.
Good enough, I thought as bits of burning paper fluttered down, bearing descriptions of bodices. A piece of me was amazed. Bastille had had trouble fighting one of these things, and I’d just taken out a group of them. Something was seriously wrong with my Oculator powers. I mean, it was awesomely wrong, yes, but the Lens I stuffed into my pocket was so hot to the touch it could have fired an egg.*
The explosion I caused made enough of a mess that my team was able to duck away from the main battlefield through a small alley between two archive buildings.
“So, Cousin!” Dif said. “What sort of zany, bombastic shenanigans do you have planned for us?”
“Find my dad,” I said, looking to Shasta. “How do we get an index for this place?”
“Only the most important of Librarians will have that kind of information,” Shasta said. “If this is like other high-level libraries, they’ll carry something called an authenticator. It will let them into important rooms, and probably will include a map and copies of the local indexes.”
“So we need to steal one of those,” I said, rubbing my chin. “Or convince a Librarian to lead us where we want to go.”
“Yeah, yeah!” Dif said. “And along the way, we’ll do something really unexpected and silly, right? Then, as we go farther, it will suddenly make perfect sense!”
Why had I put him in my team again?
“Wouldn’t the lesser Librarians need the index?” I asked as we continued down the alleyway. “How else would they know where to go?”
“Lesser Librarians,” my mother said, “get assigned to one of these small buildings and spend their entire lives working inside it—adding new items when brought, designing new sorting methods when they have nothing to do. They’ll never know the entire Highbrary’s index; that’s a holy thing beyond them. And they’re unlikely to have authenticators that will get us past locked doors.”
I shivered, thinking of a life trapped in a little room far from the sun, doing menial, repetitive work. It would be like … well, like any other job, I
guess.* But those robes sure did look hot.
Robes …
As we left the alleyway, I led the others around the corner and into another of the archive rooms. This one was filled with shelves and shelves of those little rules inserts you get with a deck of playing cards. Not the playing cards themselves, mind you. Just the rules.
This place was odder than a river-dwelling species of mammal from the mustelidae family.*
Inside were a handful of the robe-wearing cultist Librarians. These, instead of cowering, were calmly moving stacks of cards and holding each one up to a candle’s flame to inspect it.
“Indexing the cards by minor variations in translucence,” my mother explained. “Hopscotch Vindaloo scale.”
I stepped up to the Librarians and put on my Oculator’s Lenses, trying my best to look threatening. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to need everyone in this room to remove their clothing.”
The Librarians kept right on working, though Cousin Dif shrugged and began to unbutton his shirt.
“Not you,” I said.
“Technically, you did say—”
“Ahem,” I said more loudly, getting out my Shamefiller’s Lens, then stepping toward the working Librarians. “Don’t make me use this!”
They barely glanced at me.
“These are archivists, Alcatraz,” my mother said, brushing past me. “You’re making the wrong kind of threats; personal safety is of little concern to these types.” She snatched a rules card off a table and held it toward a candle.
“No!” one of the Librarians cried. “Only one million seven hundred thousand and sixty-three of those were printed! It’s irreplaceable!”
“Plus,” another added, “that one has a smudge on the left side. It’s a misprint!”
“Robes,” my mother said, “on the floor. Now.”
They hurried to obey. Under the dark robes they wore surprisingly normal clothing. Slacks, blouses or polo shirts. Business-casual dress. I suddenly imagined how life must be for these Librarians, who were otherwise ordinary people from the Hushlands. In the mornings they’d kiss their spouses, then drive off to work in a secret underground bunker where they sorted playing cards all day for a sect of evil Librarians.